SP-Studiohttp://www.sp-studio.de
Tue, 15 Jan 2019 09:22:54 +0000en-UShourly1https://wordpress.org/?v=4.8A look back – and next stepshttp://www.sp-studio.de/a-look-back-and-next-steps/
http://www.sp-studio.de/a-look-back-and-next-steps/#commentsSun, 06 Jan 2019 17:53:07 +0000http://www.sp-studio.de/?p=4601Continue reading →]]>Happy new year! I hope 2019 started great for you and will bring you a lot of joy.

In this blog post I want to tell you about my plans for this year and look back on the last one. 2018 has been very exciting! Back in January I announced my plans to replace the old SP-Studio with a “remake” that won’t rely on the dying Adobe Flash plugin anymore. To make this possible I had to ask for financial support. This step was neccessary to safe the future of this website and I am incredibly thankful for everybody who decided to donate. My minimum goal was reached and I even found help with the coding. During the following months Kai Wegner helped me to build the base of the new SP-Studio and I worked on the design, learned how to deal with the new coding and started to convert and improve the old items.

While the financial support was enough to start with this huge project it was not enough for me to take bigger breaks from my daily job. So while I am very satisfied with how the SP-Studio remake turns out so far it will take time to finish it. I cannot give you a release date yet, but I want you to know I am working on it whenever I can.

How your money is spent

Since I want to be transparent with the money you donated here is an overview about my earnings in 2018.

So in total I earned 2.793 €. Thank you very much! As you can see the month after my initial announcement was amazingly successful which mainly was caused by SP-Studio visitors sharing the news. As expected the attention dropped after a couple of weeks, but Patreon was a constant source for donations with about 100 $ per month. This is why both ways to support the SP-Studio are very important.

From these earnings 1.020 € were used to pay for expenses directly tied to the development, such as software and webspace. So 1.773 € were left this year as my own wage for working on the SP-Studio. This translates into about four weeks off from my regular job for working on the SP-Studio instead. But I worked on it more than that to make some progress. This is just a calculation to illustrate why the donations are so important and why they directly affect the release date.

What progress was made in 2018

The current version of the SP-Studio received 93 new items in 2018. Since I reached my milestone of 100 $ per month on Patreon I promised to draw an average of 12 items per month instead of the current 7 items per month. But some items will be included in the new version instead, so this is why they did not show up yet.

The new version of the SP-Studio has reached beta status, which means the basic functions are working. And it looks great already! New icons were designed and many items have been prepared already to work with the new version. If you wonder why this takes so long I wrote a detailed blog post about the process.

What is planned for 2019

The damaged forum will be replaced by a better forum software this month to provide you with a better place for feedback, support and random conversations with other fans. And I will continue with content updates for the current version during the development of the new one so you won’t get bored during the wait. I also want to add a new section to this website with alle the information about the new SP-Studio in one place.

Additional features like custom colors or rotating will be added to the SP-Studio remake during the next couple of months and I hope to release the beta version then for testing. It will be shown to my Patrons and other supporter first. Meanwhile I continue to transfer old items to the new SP-Studio and improve them.

I will also decide on a final name soon. SP-Studio remake does not sound good… Perhaps it will be called Super SP-Studio or just SP-Studio 2? Feel free to discuss your ideas in the comments! While SP-Studio 2 sounds like a logical solution I kinda like the sound of Super SP-Studio and think it’s less boring. But I haven’t decided on a name yet.

]]>http://www.sp-studio.de/a-look-back-and-next-steps/feed/4Christmas Special 2018http://www.sp-studio.de/christmas-special-2018/
http://www.sp-studio.de/christmas-special-2018/#commentsSat, 01 Dec 2018 19:34:02 +0000http://www.sp-studio.de/?p=4470Continue reading →]]>To celebrate the end of an eventful year let’s have 24 days of SP-Studio updates in a row! The 11th annual Christmas Special has started with new clothes, body parts, background and other items. You don’t want to miss anything? I will write about it on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter and update this blog post daily. The first update is a big one: Six new mouths for the face expressions of your characters!

As always I am happy about feedback. It’s your comments that mean a lot to me and this time of the year everybody can wish for an update. So don’t be shy – write about which recent updates you like and what you’d like to see in the future! You can make concrete wishes or just suggest which category I should visit again.

]]>http://www.sp-studio.de/christmas-special-2018/feed/26SP-Studio Remake: Preparationshttp://www.sp-studio.de/sp-studio-remake-preparations/
http://www.sp-studio.de/sp-studio-remake-preparations/#commentsWed, 21 Nov 2018 13:47:01 +0000http://www.sp-studio.de/?p=4392Continue reading →]]>The SP-Studio remake is making progress, but unfortunately there is nothing new to show you yet. I mainly do things in the background which are very time consuming but boring to look at. So I thought about what I could show you in a blog post… and came up with this “little” text about how to convert an old SP-Studio item into a new one. Perhaps some of you are interested in “behind the scene” stuff like this.

I apologize in advance for boring you. :)

For every SP-Studio item I follow these steps…

1. I open the old file, remove the coding and copy the plain image into a specific frame of a new file.

A more detailed explaination: In the old SP-Studio every item (and its corresponding code) was stored in its own Flash file (fla). When I wanted to publish them I had to create a swf file from it and upload it. In the new SP-Studio the whole coding will be redone, not using Flash’s Action Sctript Language anymore. So the old code can be deleted. I just copy the plain drawings to a new file and later they will be exported as svg files instead of swf files. I still use Flash because I prefer working with it, but now there is just one of these files per category. One for all the hats… one for all the long hair… and so on. Every category uses a three character short code, like “bod” for the “bodyparts” category and “bod_nos” for the “noses” subcategory. So I know the file bod_nos.fla contains all drawings fort he noses category.

If you are used to working with Adobe Animate / Flash you might know a.fla file is divided into layers and frames. Layers work like in Photoshop or similar picture editing software: You can put one part of an image on top of another without deleting parts of the first picture. Frames are usually used for animations, but since I only keep my fla files for storage now, I use them to organize the items. Think of it as a word document with different pages. For example the horse which will later be the file “pet003.svg” is placed in frame 3 of the pet.fla file. For renumbering all my items I used their current order. New items will come after that from now on. Those numbers are important, because the items don’t have names.

This is one of my old files with the ActionScript code.

2. I correct the position of the drawing because the symmetry was off.

You might not have noticed this, but the characters of the old SP-Studio are not located in the exact center of the picture. Why? I have no idea! But it annoys me now, and so I fixed it for the new SP-Studio. I also made the body shape perfectly symmetric. But those small changes lead to the following: Whenever I paste an old item (except for backgrounds) I have to move it to its new position. This position has to be exactly the right one. If I add a hairstyle and it’s only 1 pixel off this will cause a visual bug. I also have to make sure the items still look good when you flip them or change their colors. Sometimes you only notice a small gap when you try different colors. I always keep a dummy character in the lowest level so I can check if the item’s position fits it perfectly.

Everything moved a little bit to the right to center the body perfectly.

3. I correct the shape to fix small errors or make it better fit the body.

About 90% of the drawings need corrections. There are two main reasons for this:

Many drawings are more than 10 years old, and back then I did not draw with high resolution in mind. Then I added the full screen mode and different export sizes to the SP-Studio and it was embarrising to see how my old drawings looked like compared to my newer ones. You notice errors you did not notice in the small original size. With the new SP-Studio I want to improve this.

The second reasons is a new features that’s planned to be added to the new SP-Studio: You will be able to change the order of the items freely, like layers. For example every shirt can be worn on top or under any other shirt. But this means I have to make sure they all are exactly the same size. Again 1 single pixel off can cause to make it look ugly. In the old SP-Studio only the freestyle collection had these strict rules.

4. I improve some drawings which I think look ugly.

Here comes the artistic and most fun part, but also the most time consuming one. Since many SP-Studio drawings are very old I don’t actually like them anymore. Today I would draw them differently because I have improved my drawing skills over the years and prefer a slightly different style. Since I don’t have time to redraw all of them I just pick some and add more details to make them better fit the newer items. Or I use effects I did not use in the past. For exaple now all glasses might have transparent colors or I add optional shadows and highlights. I draw everything with an ordinary mouse in Adobe Animate because I am really bad at using tablets.

Let’s give the Santa hat a nicer look.

5. I make the colors of the item fit the new color palette.

As you might already know the new SP-Studio will offer custom colors for way more items than the old one. But every item comes with original colors I select. To make sure you can change them back to the way they were before I pick them from the same palette you will be using to selct the custom colors. So I controll and change the colors of most items to fit with the palette.

6. I have to make sure different colored areas always overlap.

This point was not on my list at first but it sneaked in because of an annoying bug. When I used swf files my drawings looked fine, but the svg files made them look really ugly. I wondered what was happening and then I realized: There were small gaps between the different colored parts of the drawing. You could see the background between them. The only way to solve this problem is to make the different colored areas of the image overlap. So I change all the drawings now to make this work and I use groups and layers to keep everything in order. It’s the most annoying part of the whole process and very time consuming. Think of the colorful patterns of some of the clothes or background images… I really hate this svg bug. Only items with one single color are not affected by it. But there are not many of these (mostly eyebrows).

Now every shape with a different color overlaps the others.

7. I group areas of the drawing for custom colors.

The next step is to make you able to change the colors of the item and to remove shadows at will. To make this happen I assign up to 10 different groups to different areas of the drawing and name then: color 1 light, color 1 normal, color 1 dark, color 1 super dark, color 2 light, color 2 normal, color 2 dark, color 2 super dark, and up two areas for colors which shall not be changed. Most items don’t need all of these though. By naming the groups this way the svg file later recognizes: “Okay, I have to change the color of the area with this name because you clicked on this button.” Or you can remove one group to remove shadows for an object.

The custom color system for the SP-Studio is complicated compared to those usually used in characters creators because I use my own palette. The reason for this is the following: I want to pick the colors for light and dark highlights myself instead of calculating them automatically. Because when you make yellow darker the visualy effect is stronger than with a dark blue. So I feel like the end results look better if I use hand selected color combinations. But obviously this means some extra work.

The new system for groups / layers looks like this. Every column is a different item.

8. I prepare the thumbnail which will be seen in the category.

Every item needs a small image for the item selection of the SP-Studio: a thumbnail. The new SP-Studio automatically includes a small version of the svg file, but there is one problem with this: Most items are really small compared to the size of the whole picture. And the svg file of an item always has the size of the whole picture. So I prepare extra thumnail images for every single item to make them appear as bi gas possible in the thumbnail area. Luckily this is just a copy & paste process and then I resize the image. Only the background sceneries don’t need extra thumbnail files.

9. I add a mask if it’s an item for the hands.

Holding an item in the hands of the characters is a tricky problem, because it’s just 2D drawings. The hand hast to overlap some parts of the item, but the item has to overlap parts of the hand as well to make it look realistic. Since the objects appear on top of the hands I solve this by adding holes by using a procedure called masking. You might have heard of if from software like Photoshop. This way the original drawings stays complete because the hole is not really there bu just added by the mask.

Holes are needed for every object the character should be able to hold in his hands.

10. I export svg files for the item and its thumbnail.

This is the last step done within Adobe Flash / Animate: I save the prepared images as svg files. Most items need two image files: The main file and a thumbnail. This is not difficult to do, but I had to buy Adobe Animate for it, because my old Flash version did not support svg export. After trying several free tools which did not work properly I bought the new version in addition to my old one, even though this export option is the only part of it I actually need. Thanks tot he support of my Patrons I was able to use svg files which are the key element oft he SP-Studio remake.

Now I open the svg file for the item with an editor and add a couple of lines to the code. These “meta tags” hold information about wether or not the item should allow moving, flipping, rotating, recolering and all the other freatures. Since this is different for every item the information is stored directly in the svg file.

12. I add the actual code for the item.

I guess this is the easiest part because the coding of the new SP-Studio was prepared by Kai in a perfect way. I just need to copy a line and change a number according to the number of the new item. Then it appears in the SP-Studio and can be used. The category is determined by where I add this line of code. I can also add a name or desciption if I want to.

Looks slightly more impressive than my old ActionScript code.

And that’s it. With these steps the item has moved from the old SP-Studio to the SP-Studio remake and is ready for using it!
The current plans involve to keep about 1.850 items from the old SP-Studio, so this might explain why I need SO many months to get this done. :)

]]>http://www.sp-studio.de/sp-studio-remake-preparations/feed/4(Contest) news (November )http://www.sp-studio.de/contest-news-november-3/
http://www.sp-studio.de/contest-news-november-3/#respondWed, 21 Nov 2018 11:22:08 +0000http://www.sp-studio.de/?p=4426Continue reading →]]>Before I talk about the contests let me announce something about the forum: You can access the old forum again to save pictures and text. But it’s broken, so new posts do not work. I will switch to a new forum software and try to rescue as much as I can, but I cannot promise anything. So please save anything you want to keep.

Since this whole PHP problem made things a bit chaotic for me, an update is about to be finished and the Christmas Special is around the corner I will skip the picture contest for December. This means the current contest about ROAYALS runs longer. You can submit your pictures until November 31st. The voting will run trough December.

In the meanwhile have a look at the last winners: Congratulations to Art Vandelay for winning the FATALITY contest! Please contact me when you want to claim your prize – a free wish for a SP-Studio update. You can find all contest winners in the HALL OF FAME.

]]>http://www.sp-studio.de/contest-news-november-3/feed/0Thank You Patrons!http://www.sp-studio.de/thank-you-patrons/
http://www.sp-studio.de/thank-you-patrons/#respondMon, 19 Nov 2018 17:54:06 +0000http://www.sp-studio.de/?p=4412Continue reading →]]>It’s #ThankYouPatrons day, and I want you to know how important your support is to me!

Because of you SP-Studio.de survives. And I hope this brings a little bit of joy to people from around the world who build their own characters. This internet can be difficult to deal with, so I always wanted to create a welcoming place for everybody who wants to be creative. To make this happen I tried to keep everything on my website for free for those who cannot afford to pay anything. Voluntarily donations are the only way to achieve this.

Since I announced the plans for the SP-Studio remake to save its future nearly one year ago I received many donations via Patreon and PayPal. They made it possible for me to start working on the SP-Studio remake and pay for the software I needed (Adobe Animate and WebStorm). Thank you so much!

]]>http://www.sp-studio.de/thank-you-patrons/feed/0Forum problemshttp://www.sp-studio.de/forum-problems/
http://www.sp-studio.de/forum-problems/#commentsFri, 26 Oct 2018 09:32:03 +0000http://www.sp-studio.de/?p=4354Continue reading →]]>If you were active in the SP-Studio community you might have noticed problems with the forum. It has been down for two days now and unfortunately things look bad.

The reason for this is a new PHP version on the server. The forum software was very old and broken because updates did not work anymore (conflicts between plugins, a long story). Since it’s only a small community I decided to keep it running and replace it in the future when I find a solution for exporting. But if you run old PHP code at some point it won’t be supported anymore by the PHP version on the server which is regularly updated. Updates are a good thing for security reasons, but in this case it killed the forum and there is no access anymore. I feel bad about how this happened… At least I’d wanted to give the members the chance to backup things before I replace the forum with a more modern software. I will try to make this possible. In the meantime you can contact me by e-mail or here in the news comments. I hope the regular visitors of the forum see this post.

UPDATE: You have access to the forum again, but it’s too broken to post anything. Please save anything you want to save! We will move to a different forum software in january and I don’t know yet what I can keep.

]]>http://www.sp-studio.de/forum-problems/feed/180s cartoons update #3http://www.sp-studio.de/80s-cartoons-update-3/
http://www.sp-studio.de/80s-cartoons-update-3/#commentsTue, 23 Oct 2018 21:29:32 +0000http://www.sp-studio.de/?p=4344Continue reading →]]>The final update inspired by classic cartoons is online! This time I picked four characters from different shows:

Rainbow Brite: Dress, hair and make-up

Cubbi Gummy: Shirt, hat, mouth, ears, hair

Muppet Baby Miss Piggy: Dress, gloves, hair, nose, ears

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Breastplate

I hope you liked those nostalgic costumes and I am sure the animal parts will come in handy for creating pictures.

In case you wonder what’s planned next: November will bring another small update slected by my Patreon supporters. The vote is still running, so you can still join. And of course there will be the annual Christmas Special in December. Meanwhile the work on the SP-Studio remake continues and I will post another look behind the scenes soon.

]]>http://www.sp-studio.de/80s-cartoons-update-3/feed/2Contest news (October)http://www.sp-studio.de/contest-news-october-3/
http://www.sp-studio.de/contest-news-october-3/#respondThu, 18 Oct 2018 17:51:38 +0000http://www.sp-studio.de/?p=4311Continue reading →]]>The final “80s cartoons” update will be out in a couple of days, after curing the cold which is picking on me right now. Until then you could join the current picture contest. Let’s celebrate Halloween with the gory topic FATALITY! Show a bloody, funny, cruel, famous or unusual death scene. Be creative! It’s important to not just show a Halloween costume. These pictures won’t count this time. And remember: This is not just about murder. So any Darwin Award winner counts for inspiration as well. Submit your picture until October 20th on the CONTEST PAGE. Then the voting will start.

And of course you can have a closer look on the recent winners as well. Congratulations to Eggyslav for winning the AUTUMN contest! You can find all contest winners in the HALL OF FAME.

]]>http://www.sp-studio.de/contest-news-october-3/feed/080s cartoons #2: Duckshttp://www.sp-studio.de/80s-cartoons-2-ducks/
http://www.sp-studio.de/80s-cartoons-2-ducks/#commentsSun, 02 Sep 2018 13:51:54 +0000http://www.sp-studio.de/?p=4246Continue reading →]]>It has been a while since the last one because I mainly worked on the SP-Studio remake lately, but here it is: The second update inspired by 80s (and a little bit 90s…) cartoons! This time I added costumes for three main characters from the Disney cartoons DuckTales and Darkwing Duck. These are the new items:

Scrooge McDuck: “beard”, eyebrows, mouth, shirt, glasses

Darkwing Duck: shirt, hat

Gosalyn Mallard: shirt, hair

The topic for this update was chosen in a poll by my 5€+ Patrons. Let’s see which classic cartoon costumes will come next… :)

]]>http://www.sp-studio.de/80s-cartoons-2-ducks/feed/2Contest news (August)http://www.sp-studio.de/contest-news-august-4/
http://www.sp-studio.de/contest-news-august-4/#respondSun, 19 Aug 2018 18:45:05 +0000http://www.sp-studio.de/?p=4206Continue reading →]]>Have you joined the current picture contest yet? Reactivate your Netflix accounts, because this month’s contest is about MODERN TV SERIES! Or tv shows or tv programs, whatever you prefer to call them… There are some restrictions: Your picture must be about a life action drama / comedy tv show which had new episodes in the 2000s or 2010s. NO game shows, NO casting shows, NO cartoons. I am looking forward to your pictures! Submit them until August 20th on the CONTEST PAGE. So there is still onw more day left. Then the voting will start.

Congratulations to the winner of the last contest about CONSPIRACY THEORIES: Eggyslav with his picture of Baphomet! Have a look at all contest winners in the HALL OF FAME.